


Together We're Better Than Singular Scars

by dorothydonne



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Fate, M/M, Minor Sexuality Crisis, Stopwatches 'Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothydonne/pseuds/dorothydonne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson had never evaded fate of his own volition.</p><p>Three times in his life, John’s clock had run down only to reset at the last moment. Each time he saw the digits on the inside of his wrist ticking down, he felt a flutter in his chest, knowing that the woman of his dreams, his soulmate, <i>the one</i> could be right around the corner, inching closer. It was a heady knowledge--that of all the people in the world, the person on the other side of those mysterious numbers was meant solely for him.</p><p>If only they’d cross paths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together We're Better Than Singular Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a kinkmeme prompt from forever ago that basically asked for a stopwatches 'verse that count down to when you'll meet your soulmate. There were some awesome fills--and I can't even find the original prompt--but this has been stuck in my head ever since I read the prompt and I finally sat down to write it.

John Watson had never evaded fate of his own volition.

Three times in his life, John’s clock had run down only to reset at the last moment. Each time he saw the digits on the inside of his wrist ticking down, he felt a flutter in his chest, knowing that the woman of his dreams, his soulmate, _the one_ could be right around the corner, inching closer. It was a heady knowledge--that of all the people in the world, the person on the other side of those mysterious numbers was meant solely for him.

If only they’d cross paths.

He wrote it off differently each time. The first time, he’d been 18, and even he’d thought he was too young to see the clock running down. It wasn’t surprising that his soul mate had been skittish; perhaps she was nervous about meeting him without really experiencing all that the world had to offer. Probably just cold feet about making that connection too soon, not wanting to settle just yet. If she was younger than him, maybe a year or two, she could’ve been called off by her parents. It wasn’t uncommon for parents to want their children to wait before letting fate take them on that course.

It made sense that she’d run off. He paid it no mind. A few years would let them grow up a bit.

It happened again when he was 22. He’d been doing a lab project, alone rather late, and had burned his palm. He’d only seen the numbers flicking down to mere minutes while tending to his injury--he didn’t remember being so close to the count down when he’d looked that morning. But before he could muse on the change in fate, it changed again. When the inky skin reset from three minutes to three years, he’d stared at it and wondered if he was being avoided. And why.

He knew for certain that she was intent to flee from fate when he caught a glimpse of a dark, curly-haired head hurrying away from him at the age of 25 just before the clock was about to run out.

John was determined to see her again. Now he’d had a glimpse. That had to count for something. If the clock ran down again, he’d just look around. He was bound to recognize those short curls. It would probably be a bit mad of him to chase her down, but honestly, it was getting ridiculous. Three times? That was practically unheard of.

Now, at 26, he was rushing through the hall toward where they’d just called him down to the A&E. He’d been having a nap (if he could call it that--it’d barely been 20 minutes since he’d relocated some bloke’s shoulder), but apparently there had been a bad car accident and they were borderline overwhelmed.

He’d been set to walk through the doors--listening to the shouting from inside about the drug overdose of a 23-year-old--when he was stopped by one of the A&E nurses.

“I need to check your wrist,” she said, reaching out.

John frowned at her, confused, but she held her hand up, open palm. “The patient’s clock is running down.”

It was protocol, of course, to check wrists when a patient’s clock was low on time. When one was dying on a table, it tended to be a rather inopportune moment to meet your soulmate. But the potential there was an occupational hazard--one that was often avoided with a wrist check just like the one he now faced.

John looked down at his wrist, realizing he hadn’t even looked at it in all the time he’d been at the hospital. He was going on 26 hours--and the time on his wrist was counting down from 48 seconds.

She watched with wide eyes, glancing back up at him before turning his palm over, letting him make the choice. He could go in and try to remain impartial, meeting the love of his life while she lay on a table a beat away from cardiac arrest. 

Or he could walk away from her, change fate as she’d done to him three times.

If he went in, what would he find? How would he feel about meeting his match and knowing she was a junkie? But maybe she wasn’t--maybe it was accidental? His head was swimming in the rush from the fact that all that separated him from her was a set of doors. His heart pounded with an adrenaline and hormone rush that had come on so suddenly that it was making his head light. It was too big a choice to make in the time he had. When would he find her again if he didn’t go in now? And what if it was up to him to save her? 

“I can’t--” John looked back down at the numbers ticking away on his wrist, moving apathetically from 30 to 29 to 28 and down. “I have to--”

He gestured over his shoulder back the way he’d come from and she nodded in understanding. When he turned, the clock stalled for a moment on 19 before resetting itself to ten years--the longest gap John had ever seen since it first reset eight years prior. But, as he knew, that could change at any time.

Split-second decisions. Crossed streets. Tube stops. Time was variable.

When he found an empty break room, he dropped into a chair and pressed his hands to his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying to calm himself. If she lived through the night, it could be ten years. _Ten years._

Fate’s best estimate was that they would find each other again in a decade.

He did the math in his head. If the number was to be believed, he’d find her again at the age of 36. And she was--what had they said? 23? She was three years younger--she’d be 33 when they met if she allowed him to find her.

All she had to do was survive the night.

John peeled himself away from his hands and dared to look down at the tattoo-like numbers ticking away on his wrist. 

If they lost her down in emergency, his wrist would bear the scar of her lost soul. He’d know it the second she stopped breathing--it would burn and blister to sear away the dissolved connection until he was left with the blatant reminder that his soulmate had been lost before she’d been found.

He’d seen younger people with the marks, of course. Hell, there’d been a six-year-old down the street from him when he’d been younger who had borne the mark at the age of three. It was unfair at every age, but given that he’d come so close on four different occasions made him especially bitter at the universe. They couldn’t take her away from him now.

One of the attending nurses knocked on the doorway of the staff room, stepping in cautiously. There was a strange look on her face, like she was confused and sympathetic at the same time.

“I heard,” she said, noting his distress. Her dark hair was pulled back, but flying every which way, and she looked like the last stretch of her double shift was about to get the best of her. Makeup she’d long ago applied had faded, causing darker circles under her eyes than what would’ve been natural without her smudged mascara. There was something in her eyes that made John want to look away. Sympathy wasn’t something he wanted, nor was pity.

John straightened. He didn’t think he wanted to talk about it, especially with someone he’d once passed the time with. They’d had a brief fling that involved several storage closets and a few unadvised sleepless nights in his flat between shifts. Of course, that had promptly ended the moment her clock had unexpectedly run down one afternoon in the waiting room of the A&E.

The numbers on her wrist were gone now, replaced by a pigment-free band of skin around her finger to tell the world she was spoken for.

How he’d always longed for that band himself. He’d come so close now--moments more and the band could have formed, numbers fading. If he’d been willing to take the chance; to take his stranger’s hand in that dire moment and let the connection form completely.

_Coward._

Now all he was facing was the possibility of a shameful, lonely scar come morning or another decade of passing the time with various women who were doing the same with him.

Without saying anything to his well-meaning colleague, John stood and left the room. His shift was close enough to being over. They’d understand why he left, even if he didn’t tell them outright. There was no shame in the need to be _away_ if something so broken could happen in the night.

And when John woke in the morning after a fitful night of restless sleep, his numbers were still there, ticking down from 10 years, 4 months, 19 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes, 49 seconds. 10:4:19:8:32:48, 47, 46, 45....

Steady as her heartbeat somewhere across town, waiting. He would meet her on the twenty-ninth day of January in 2010.

John marked his calendar as if he had any control over whether or not the day would actually come.

***

When John Watson was 35, he was shot trying in vain to save a fallen soldier.

John Watson died during surgery.

Yes, it was only for a few brief moments, but those moments were enough to attempt to sever his connection to his other half. 

The blistering was sore in the way that a dead man’s wound wouldn’t have been, a dull ache that served as a constant reminder that there was someone out there feeling for him. Someone who had, perhaps, awakened in the middle of the night to a burning pain and watched as the numbers practically boiled out of her skin--and then stopped.

They were still ticking down when he was sent home. He watched them on the plane, on the train, on the tube through his London. He watched the number getting smaller from months to weeks.

She’d run away from him again, he was certain.

There were some days when he wished he’d never woken up. Maybe she would have been better off with the scar than a broken soldier who could barely get from one end of his bedsit to the other.

 

***

The man was a bloody whirlwind.

John found that he was having a hard time keeping the awestruck look off his face as the curly-haired man seemed to preen about the lab. There was something about Stamford’s smirk that made John feel like there was a joke being played on him--how could he be expected to keep up with this bloke?

And how had he gotten flatmate’s from a glance?

“Is that it?” John asked. 

“Is that what?”

“We’ve only just met and we’re gonna go and look at a flat?”

“Problem?” the taller man asked.

John stared for a moment. “We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting--I don’t even know your name.”

“I know you’re an army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him. Possibly because he’s an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic--quite correctly, I’m afraid. Not to mention the fact that you’re currently unmatched. That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”

The stranger had barely taken a breath while John stared, but when he was finished, a small smile formed on his lips. He held out his left hand from too-long coat sleeves. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is two-two-one B Baker Street.”

John held out his hand in a daze, only really registering the hand shake when he felt something like an electric shock pulsing in his palm. A warmth spread through his fingers at the tight grasp of the other man’s hand and John jumped a bit, eyes darting to the touch. He couldn’t see the wrist opposite his own, but he didn’t need to.

He looked back up into clear blue-grey eyes that held a hint of surprise and a bit of mischief behind them. 

But... _how_?

“I do believe you’ve met your match, Doctor Watson.” He gave a smirk before drawing away quickly, leaving John to stare down at the fading scar on his wrist and the forming band of white around the third finger of his left hand.

“Afternoon,” Sherlock said as he disappeared out the door, his billowing blue coat barely keeping up behind him.

John looked down at his wrist once more. It was one thing to have your match not be the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty you expected her to be. Fantasies were aptly named for a reason, after all.

But for a man to be on the other end of John’s numbers? 

How could he be _gay_? 

John Watson had never so much as given a bloke a second glance. He barely tolerated porn that featured too much of the male partner. Sure, he’d spent time in the army, but he hadn’t even resorted to friendly shags the way some of the other soldiers did. 

There was no room in his life plan for a sexuality crisis--though it seemed he didn’t even have time for one. His finger was already nearly pigment free around the base--the band was coming in strong to solidify the match. 

Something inside of him knew that Sherlock Holmes was the other half of the puzzle. It was now up to John to see it, as well. 

Still, he looked at Stamford, praying for some sort of elaborate prank, but the man in the colorful tie just smiled as if he was expecting John to understand it all someday.

“Yeah,” he said. “He’s always like that.”

John was sure he’d soon learn just what that meant, whether he was ready to or not. 


End file.
